Bluffing

Game description of the 2011 revised edition from the publisher:

Welcome to Cadwallon, an infamous city known for the chicanery of its artful guilds! Can your guild sweep through its districts and gain power through recruiting influential citizens and acquiring valuable relics?

The revised edition of Arcana is a card game of recruitment and resource gathering for 2-4 crafty leaders. Command a guild of loyal agents during a series of district encounters against your opponents. Score the most prominent citizens, advantageous locations, and valuable treasures through bribery and power struggles. Collect the highest amount of victory points to become the master guild of Cadwallon!

This vibrant game creates a fantastical atmosphere for players to enjoy while they attempt to best their opponents through strategic card play. Make your guild the most influential by winning Stake cards and strengthening your deck with impressive Personalities, advantageous Locations, or tempting Relics to use in bribery.

The revised edition of Arcana introduces two new guilds to choose from, the Guild of Fortune-tellers and the Guild of Architects, as well a variety of optional rules that players can utilize to enhance their experience. Players can customize their guild, fulfill objectives, recruit Militia, invoke the ability of their Guild Masters, affect game play through random events, or optimize tactical strategy through card discards. Which variant will you use in your game?

Summary of Play

Arcana is played over a series of rounds that are comprised of two phases, the Intrigue phase and the Resolution phase. Send Agents from your unique guild deck to any of Cadwallon’s districts to claim control of Stake cards: Personalities, Locations, and Relics, all of which award victory points.

During these district encounters players gain control of Stake cards by playing their Agent cards. Stake cards are won through meeting or exceeding the card’s main arcanum: either Military, Political, Spiritual, or Financial. Whichever Agent has the highest matching arcanum type wins the current revealed Stake card in that district.

Of course if the Stake card you are after is a Personality card you can choose to bribe them with a Relic Card instead, immediately ending the phase and wresting the victory points from your opponents should you succeed.

Players can increase the mystery of the final outcome through bluffing. Players control two friendly distracts (piles of Stake cards) in which they can place their Agents facedown. Will your opponent chance opposing you when he is uncertain of your arcanum value?

This text refers to the Queen 2007 reprint. The older edition had players write down their viking orders and was two rounds longer.

In Eketorp, players build Viking strongholds upon the Swedish island of Öland.

The goal of the game is to collect the most valuable blocks to build your own fortress, either by winning battles on the resource spaces or by stealing blocks from other vikings.

Each turn, new resources appear and the players secretly plan their viking movements. After all the placements are revealed, vikings battle each other for blocks (with the losers sent off to the field hospital to recover). The game ends after a set number of rounds, or when one of the players has succeeded in finishing their fortress.

Banküberfall description: The bank directors want to have more excitement in their lives. So they decide to rob their own banks.
As one of those bank directors, the player can speculate with money transfers, distract policemen with a beautiful women, spy and intrigue against each other.

Gravediggers description: this game is the 2007 Twilight Creations edition of the same game with a different theme: here gravediggers are competing in robbing graves. Here the special caracters are beautiful women, guards, attendants and bandits (4 of each as the character and card distribution, just like the rules are exactly the same in the two games).

A game of outrageous bluffing, honest haggling, and crafty negotiation. It's Halloween! Time to don your scariest costume and run through the neighborhood shouting "Trick or Treat!". Collect costume and treat cards, and you're on your way to winning Halloween Party. But beware - your opponents may play tricks on you!

Simple enough. But is it? Halloween Party has a ghoulish Twist - You can't play your own cards! You must trade with your opponents, playing the cards they give you, and letting them play your cards. Can you trust them to trade the cards you want? Probably not. But that's where the fun begins...

A winner of the 2000 Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société.

It’s a thin line between good and evil, and you’re going to have to find the right balance and avoid ending up
In Limbo!

Play your cards on either the good or evil side of each of the five colors, as you tip the balance towards good on some colors and bad on others. However, since you only score on the cards left in your hand, you’ll need to carefully weigh the consequences of each of your choices.

With a lot of strategy and a little luck, you can do yourself a world of good even if things heat up for your opponents.